Nancy Rosenbloom

Growing up in a family of helpers, it is no surprise that Nancy Rosenbloom dedicated her career to advocating for families, children, and young people. “Everyone in my family is part of a helping profession," she said. “It just felt natural that I would follow the same path.”

Nancy spent the first 25 years of her career at the Legal Aid Society in New York, where she held a number of roles that included both representing individuals in civil and criminal cases, as well as supervising larger scale impact litigation. Her work touched on education and special education, criminal justice, juvenile justice, foster care, housing, and mental health. 

"If you’re trying to change a system, you have to understand the system and the community you’re working with—let them guide you and create priorities," she advised. This perspective, gained from representing so many individual clients and families, has informed her efforts to create more systemic change for the communities she serves. 

After some time working on reproductive rights and clemency petitions for incarcerated individuals, the COVID pandemic and the crisis it created for people who were incarcerated brought Nancy to the ACLU National Prison Project. 

At the ACLU, Nancy then took on the significant role of co-lead counsel in a lawsuit challenging the State of Louisiana's decision to incarcerate children adjudicated delinquent—almost all of them Black—in the notorious Louisiana State Prison-Angola’s former death row building. 

Corene Kendrick, Nancy's colleague at the ACLU National Prison Project, shared about the trial:

The trial detailed the abysmal conditions in which the children were living: suffering extreme isolation, lack of family visits, minimal educational services, and excessive use of force by prison staff. Nancy led the litigation team through multiple days of hearings that led to a preliminary injunction, and then defended court’s order to the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Throughout, she did a masterful job both in the courtroom and outside of the courtroom. 

The US Department of Justice filed a statement of interest, with an important statement condemning the use of solitary confinement for children—one that is now being used to advocate for change in other parts of the country. 

"Litigating in Louisiana has brought all my years of work into perspective," said Nancy. “It was an opportunity to work toward a systemic impact, keep many children out of adult prisons, and shed light nationally on the way young people are treated in our justice systems.” 

Looking back on her career, Nancy said she is most proud of staying the course in her commitment to justice. Avoiding burnout in such an intense field can be challenging, but Nancy has handled it with humor and grace. "The only way to do it is to take breaks and to support the people you’re working with and receive support from them," she explained. Her personal strategies include hitting tennis balls “really hard” and spending time on the beach, swimming in the ocean. "Being able to consistently be in this fight for a more just society and do it with other people who feel similarly and to do it with integrity is a great source of pride.” 

Despite her clients’ victory before the Fifth Circuit, the work in Louisiana continues. "The new Louisiana governor is imposing draconian criminal justice policies, including targeting children, and the tenor and ferocity of the litigation by the state's outside law firm has only increased," Kendrick explained. Nancy continues to work diligently, now fighting to get the children out of the adult Jackson Parish Jail.

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